I have two siblings, a brother and a sister. My brother is about seven years my senior and my sister and I are eighteen months apart. Seeing as my brother and I have such a gap in age, that created a slight disconnect in things we had in common, however, we are pretty much the same other than that. Throughout school, even in elementary school, I would compare my progress to the documented progress of my brother. I had to do better than he had.
My brother and I have very similar dispositions. For the most part, growing up, we both kept to ourselves and had only a few close friends. We stayed mostly under the radar. But when I got to high school, that was when I began to seriously “compete” with him. I remembered how he did not do any sports, never left the house, never took AP courses, so I vowed to myself to do all of the things he did not. I took AP Spanish my junior year (I was the only junior in a class full of seniors), I took AP Psychology and AP AB/BC Calculus. Even though I would settle for grades worse than what I knew I could receive with a little more effort, on a scale, I was more successful for getting B’s in AP courses versus his A’s and B’s in non-AP courses. I became captain of the fencing team, I had artwork in shows, I volunteered at the Mystic Village. Everything that I did was almost as though I was compensating for the involvement that my brother had lacked. I felt as though I was the son my father never had. I would practice tennis and go fishing and go shooting with my dad, whereas my brother stayed home. I would get to bed at reasonable hours when he stayed up all night on the computer. I saw these similarities of my brother and I and I worked very hard to succeed where my brother had failed.
Now my little sister is a junior in high school and she is at the top of her class. I feel that she, too, compares herself to her older siblings. Whereas Chris had set the bar low, I had raised it, and my sister works very hard to remain/get into the top ten of her class. She sees how my efforts are paying off better than those of my brother, and she seems to strive to achieve more than either of us. Since my sister got in high school, I began working harder than I had the previous two years. I had to raise the bar more than I had, and now still I am trying every day to do better than I had the day before. My sister told me the other day how a teacher said that she is getting about the same grades on the tests in the class as I did, which makes me want to do get higher grades in future classes so that my sister cannot do better than me.
My brother and I have very similar dispositions. For the most part, growing up, we both kept to ourselves and had only a few close friends. We stayed mostly under the radar. But when I got to high school, that was when I began to seriously “compete” with him. I remembered how he did not do any sports, never left the house, never took AP courses, so I vowed to myself to do all of the things he did not. I took AP Spanish my junior year (I was the only junior in a class full of seniors), I took AP Psychology and AP AB/BC Calculus. Even though I would settle for grades worse than what I knew I could receive with a little more effort, on a scale, I was more successful for getting B’s in AP courses versus his A’s and B’s in non-AP courses. I became captain of the fencing team, I had artwork in shows, I volunteered at the Mystic Village. Everything that I did was almost as though I was compensating for the involvement that my brother had lacked. I felt as though I was the son my father never had. I would practice tennis and go fishing and go shooting with my dad, whereas my brother stayed home. I would get to bed at reasonable hours when he stayed up all night on the computer. I saw these similarities of my brother and I and I worked very hard to succeed where my brother had failed.
Now my little sister is a junior in high school and she is at the top of her class. I feel that she, too, compares herself to her older siblings. Whereas Chris had set the bar low, I had raised it, and my sister works very hard to remain/get into the top ten of her class. She sees how my efforts are paying off better than those of my brother, and she seems to strive to achieve more than either of us. Since my sister got in high school, I began working harder than I had the previous two years. I had to raise the bar more than I had, and now still I am trying every day to do better than I had the day before. My sister told me the other day how a teacher said that she is getting about the same grades on the tests in the class as I did, which makes me want to do get higher grades in future classes so that my sister cannot do better than me.